'I pray that I get pretty.' What it's like being the average one in a family of beautiful people.

There’s nothing quite like discovering your prayer journal from primary school, mid-spring clean. If a window to the soul existed, I am certain this would be its physical manifestation. 

I’d love to say that all the spiral-bound notebook contained was my wishes for world peace and prayers for the underprivileged but that would be lying. (There were some, I wasn’t a monster.) But amongst a heap of undoubtedly wholesome content I found a prayer that struck me to my core.

Scrawled in black ink was the desperate plea: I pray that I get pretty.

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Growing up, I was the clear runt of the litter. My parents were easily the youngest pair at parent-teacher evenings and were constantly lauded for their good looks. In her mid-teens, Mum even had a brief modelling stint (snagging the title of Miss Helensburgh along the way).

My siblings were smaller versions of them. 

The girls in my year group fawned over my older brother whilst grandparents and strangers alike consistently lumped praise upon my younger sister's golden head. As for the baby of the family, he was the apple of everyone's eye. He had big, soft brown eyes that brimmed with warmth and an intelligence beyond his years. 

But while the others had been bestowed with my mum’s bright smile and Dad’s glorious long lashes, I somehow ended up with thumbs that looked like toes and the vision of a deep-sea fish, drawn from the hole of undesirable ancestral traits.

Both my parents had 20/20 vision and perfectly narrow, un-stubby thumbs.

Along with vain prayers and desperate pleas to the man in the sky, I spent most birthdays blowing out my candles wishing for the impossible.

It wasn’t that I harboured a biased opinion about myself. My Year Five school photo, which my sister keeps stuck to her light switch for lols, is all the proof you need. I also wasn’t a complete eyesore – I was just extremely average looking. But placed in a family of incredibly good-looking people, it was impossible to ignore. My hair was a dull mousy brown, my mouth was full of metal and so uncommonly small that when I smiled I looked like I was in great physical discomfort. 

I didn’t make things any easier for myself, insisting on wearing pigtails that sprouted awkwardly from just above my ears, giving me the appearance of a creamy little Frankenstein. 

Around the time I scrawled that particular prayer in my diary, my two best friends at school floated off to the popular group, leaving me behind on the sun-warmed silver bench. Being two of the prettiest girls in the year group, it is no wonder they were extended invitations. I, unsurprisingly, was not. 

While I had been vaguely aware of my lack of striking features before this point, it was the first time that I can recall losing out because of it.

The world continued to reward my siblings and good-looking peers in the way that beautiful people come to expect. More friends, roses on Valentine's Day, constant and bolstering praise. My sister had a boyfriend from the age of four and my oldest brother was the vice-captain of our primary school. Me? Mum had to throw me friend parties. I felt like an imposter in this family of genetically blessed individuals.

Whilst I can count on one hand the number of times someone commented positively on my appearance as a child, the instances in which I found myself acutely aware of my siblings' superiority were abundant. I must have been around 10 years old when Mum decided, as many suburban middle-class parents do, that she best take her gaggle to a modelling agency lest the world be deprived of our gorgeous faces. So off we went.

My littlest brother was too young to partake in the process and looked on from behind Mum's legs. I’d practised my small-mouth smile in the mirror the night before and flashed the lady whose job it was to spot good-looking children my best grin. With my crisp, ironed and carefully selected clothes, I felt the part. I was squeaky clean, and surely that lent a sort of glow to my otherwise plain face? 

If it did, Child-Judging Lady didn’t notice.

The agency was exceptionally interested in two out of three of us (no prizes for guessing which two). Despite myself, I remember feeling hot tears building behind my eyes. Proof didn’t get more solid than this; I had the official word. It was no longer mere speculation. I’d known it was coming – I wasn’t blind, only shortsighted. But it still hurt.

As if I didn’t feel deficient as it was, the lady whose job it was to determine the attractive children from the plain ones clacked her way over to my little brother, flashed him a snow-white smile and requested he be brought back in a few years' time.

As a mother of four, Mum knew the value of equality and none of us ever went back to the modelling agency. It was all four or none at all. At least, that’s how the story goes in my head. It’s more likely that Mum found out just how difficult it was to juggle casting calls and auditions with four o’clock Oztag games and music lessons.

Image: Supplied.

 This was just one of many similar incidents over the course of my childhood... and adolescence. I wish I could tell you that I hit puberty and everything changed for me. But there is no ugly duckling ending to this story. No Cinderella moment. I never ‘grew’ into my looks. I am still incredibly average looking. 

Sometimes I’ll show people pictures of my sister (who, by the way, I love dearly and don't begrudge!) on my phone – “Wanna see my sister? She looks nothing like me. She could be a model."

As exclamations and gasps ensue, almost every time they’ll say, “You guys look nothing alike!”

And it's true, we don't.

But the difference now is that I have grown out of caring. 

My world is so much richer than that of my eight-year-old self. I have achieved things I never thought possible and come to value traits other than physical beauty despite the world’s insistence that I do so.

So it is a Cinderella story, really, but I’ve managed to rewrite the ending. I turned up to the ball in my rags and just stopped giving a toss.

Feature image: Supplied.